Remember
by MsBooknerd1
Summary: Hello again! It struck me a couple of days ago that I simply can't find any story where the Doctor tells Donna how he lost Rose. I mean, in "The Stolen Earth", Donna knows that Rose is "locked away in a parallel world". She also knows that parallel worlds are sealed off. So the Doctor must have told her about why Rose isn't travelling with him.


******Hello again! It struck me a couple of days ago that I simply can't find any story where the Doctor tells Donna how he lost Rose. I mean, in "The Stolen Earth", Donna knows that Rose is "locked away in a parallel world". She also knows that parallel worlds are sealed off. So the Doctor must have told her about why Rose isn't travelling with him. **

**And I do believe it would be easier for him to tell Donna about this than it would have been with Martha, because Donna saw him when he was heartbroken. I mean, come on, we all saw the look on his face when Donna asked him what he meant with "lost" (that face, the "I am almost a thousand years old and have recently lost the woman I love" face almost made me cry). **

**But the Doctor wouldn't have had to explain how he felt then with Donna. He would have had with Martha. **

**I really try to keep the characters as IC as possible, because what's the point of writing fanfiction about characters you love if they're not even themselves?**

**Oh, and I would just like to thank my lovely Beta Cooper-Gwen. She always beta's my stories and I would just like to give her some credit. So, basically: beta'd by Cooper-Gwen.**

**Quotes taken from "The Runaway Bride".**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything Doctor Who-ish. Except for my own toy TARDIS. **

They were in the control room. Donna was in a chair chilling out, and the Doctor was tinkering with the TARDIS, as usual, but he needed a Vortex Manipulator to access the right frequency for a broken stereo. He couldn't go and get it himself because he was stuck under the control panel.

"Donna!", he yelled.

"What is it, spaceman?", Donna yelled back.

"Could you please get me a Vortex Manipulator from a box under the floor?"

"Just tell me where it is.", Donna said, standing up so that she could see him.

"It's in the "T" box, opposite me, three steps to the left from the wibbly leaver. T for Time Travel."

"Okay." Donna found the wibbly leaver, walked three steps to the left and lifted up the floorboard. There she found an old-fashioned suitcase, with the large, silvery letter "T" on it. She opened it, and rummaged around in the box, throwing out T-shirts and terraform-devices as she went along. Suddenly she found something she didn't expect. A purple jeans-jacket. She vaguely recognized it from somewhere, but she couldn't remember where from. _But jackets aren't supposed to be in the "T"-box,_ she thought, a bit confused.

"Doctor?", she asked, an tentative voice.

"Yes Donna?", his voice muffled from under the TARDIS's control panel.

"Why is this jacket the "T"-box?"

"Why is which jacket?", he said, standing up.

Then he looked at the the thing she held in her hand. It was as if someone had clubbed him in the head with a hammer.

"Oh. That."

His voice was hard, empty of all emotions except grief.

"Yes. This. Why is a jeans-jacket in the "T"-box? I recognize it from somewhere but I can't place it..." Her voice faltered at the cold, sad and grieving look the Doctor was giving her.

"T for Tyler. Tyler as in Rose Tyler." His voice was flat.

Suddenly Donna knew where she had seen it before! The first time she had been on the TARDIS, that jacket had been hanging over a rail!

" _I knew it. Actin' all innocent. I'm not the first, am I. How many women have you abducted?!"_

"_That's my friend's."_

"_Where is she now, popped out for a spacewalk!"_

"_She's gone."_

"_Gone WHERE?!"_

"_I lost her."_

"_Well you can hurry up and lose ME!"_

_(Silence)_

"_How d'ya mean, lost?"_

It was Rose's jacket. Of course! This explained the sudden change in his mood. He obviously _needed_ to talk about her, even if he didn't _want_ to. Donna decided she would ask straight away.

"Where is she, Doctor? How was she? Tell me about her."

The Doctor pondered this for a moment. It hurt to think about her. It hurt to think about how she screamed as she fell towards the Void, how she cried on a beach in Norway. So he began with the easiest question.

"Remember how I told you about parallel universes?"

Donna nodded, and said:

"Sure. There are many universes, parallel to each other, like papers in a folder. Between all these universes, we've got the Void. A kind of dead space, filled with background radiation. Isn't that right?"

"Exactly. Now, have you heard about the Battle of Canary Wharf?"

"'Course I have." Donna looked proud. "It was one of those things I researched when I was looking for you. "

"Tell me about it.", the Doctor requested.

He couldn't bear to remember it himself. It was like someone stabbed him with a knife every time he thought about it.

The redhead tried to recall what she had read on the internet.

"These Cybermen-thingies came from a parallel universe. The "ghosts" were all Cybermen that wanted to upgrade the Earth. The skies filled with Daleks, and then they all flew into Canary Wharf."

"That was me. See, if you reverse the Void, it pulls in everything that's got the background radiation on it. Including me and Rose. But we held on." His voice suddenly got a cold, hard and empty edge.

"Until one of the leavers started slipping. One of the leavers which held the Void open. So Rose let go to get that leaver standing. And when it did, she fell. Her dad rescued her."

"But why don't you just go to her, then?". Donna was confused (again).

"I can't. Two universes would collapse. So I'm stuck on this side, without her. She is on the other side, without me. Never again. We will never see each other again." His voice was absolutely empty, and his eyes looked like two black holes, filled with despair. He almost looked as if he was going to cry.

"It broke you, didn' it. You're still broken." Donna's voice was soft as she stated this fact.

The Doctor looked up.

"How did you...?"

"It's easy to spot. I mean, I saw you, what, ten minutes after you lost her? Not that I was really paying attention...". Her voice trailed off. And suddenly she thought of something.

"Doctor, do you know what? Martha wouldn't have dreamed of fancying you if she'd met you when I did. Because the way you looked in the eyes when I asked you where she was... I won't ever forget that expression. You looked so very, _very_ old."

"What was I supposed to look like!", the Doctor snapped at her. He knew that Donna had meant no harm whatsoever, but he couldn't forget why he hadn't said those words. Those three words. If he just hadn't said "Quite right too", he would've had time to say those three words. She'd cried. And it was his own idiocy and pride that had made her do it.

"I'd just said goodbye to Rose!"

"But you haven't answered the most important question yet."

"Which is?"

"How _was_ she? As a person, I mean. "

"She was..." He faltered. How could he _possibly_ explain how Rose was?

"She was brave and kind and compassionate. She was brilliant and selfless and she understood about people: what made them tick, and why they all deserved a second chance. She was, is, so, so _human._ "

He had to stop there to make sure his voice wouldn't break. He felt as if someone was punching him in solar plexus repeatedly.

Donna was touched when she heard him talk like that. She didn't know that the Doctor had it in him to talk about someone in that way. But she shouldn't have been surprised, she said to herself, because the tone of his voice was exactly the same as the look in his eyes when she first asked him his friend's name, and he had answered with that:

_Her name was Rose._

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course." His voice was a bit hoarse.

"Is she what keeps you fighting? It sounds that way."

"Yes. Absolutely yes. I keep fighting, I keep going, because I rely on the firm belief that she would never, ever want me to give up." This, the Doctor realized, must be one of the truest things he'd ever said.

"But sometimes I want to forget the pain, and remember the good things. But it doesn't work like that. With the good stuff comes also the bad stuff."

There was a silence that none of them wanted to break, until Donna said:

"Don't despair yet, Doctor. She'll find her way back. To you."

The Doctor reached out for the purple jacket and she gave it to him. He took a deep breath and then, almost reverently, he folded it together and put it in a box which had suddenly opened on the TARDIS console. It was named: _**REMEMBER**__._

"Yeah.", he said. "Maybe she will."

**So, what do you think? Was it horrible, okay or good? Tell me what you think in the reviews. Personally I think it's much easier to keep the characters IC with the Doctor and Donna than the Doctor and Rose, because what can happen with the former, that you put too much romance in the stories (something that I really want to avoid). With the Doctor and Donna, that chance is about 100 trillion below zero.**

**Thank You!**

**/MsBooknerd1**


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